The current crop of race riots will not make ordinary Americans more sympathetic to the plight of American blacks

The current crop of Michael Brown and Eric Garner themed protests apparently have as one of their goals educating white Americans about the horrors of racism in America. (I say as one of their goals, since their primary goals seem to be twofold: the rapture of riot and the opportunity for looting.) I strongly believe that the protests will fail to achieve this goal.

For starters, when you see a million dollar athlete parading around in an “I can’t breathe” t-shirt, or writing the “I can’t breathe” slogan on his $300 Nikes, do you immediately think, “Oh, my God! Blacks in America are sooo oppressed”?

I don’t. I think “I want to be as oppressed as you are.” That’s what I think. (Except without the part where I have to play pro-football.)

Admittedly, the black athlete can’t help that his talent and incredible hard work shot him into the NFL stratosphere. He would argue that, by wearing that shirt, or holding his hands up when he enters a stadium, he’s doing his best to use his bully pulpit to make ignorant Americans aware that, while he’s not oppressed, some other black American is, in fact, oppressed.

Empathy, folks. It’s all about empathy. That wealthy athlete’s empathy for his oppressed brothers and sisters is meant to spark our empathy. It’s the updated version of the Wedgwood emblem that played such an important part in the evangelical Christian uprising against the horrors of the slave trade.

Indeed, even in our lifetime (or at least the lifetime of the more mature among us), this empathetic sense of brotherhood and sisterhood with a fellow human being was an important part of awakening complacent white Americans in the North and the West to the appalling human rights violations taking place in the blighted lands of Jim Crow. There was something powerful about seeing people just like us (except for the color of their skin) subject to great indignities.

We saw proud, well-groomed, fundamentally decent mothers humiliated:

We saw beautiful little girls blown up:

And we saw members of their community, who dressed and acted just as we did, mourn their deaths in silent, shocked horror:

We saw young women, dressed just like our own daughters, attacked by screaming mobs who, embarrassingly and horribly, looked even more like us than those pretty young women did:

For people who had never paid attention to, or thought seriously about, the human degradation and constitutional illegality of the South’s apartheid, these images of people like our mothers, sisters, daughters, fathers, and brothers forced us to face our own prejudice, one that was indeed rooted in the color of skin rather than the content of character. And, in a testament to the fundamental decency of most Americans, this awareness, this recognition that we allowed our prejudices to blind us to human decency, changed our conduct and our attitudes. Empathy worked — as MLK and his inner circle knew it would when they chose Rosa Parks, as solid-looking a citizen as one could find, to be their emblem of oppression.

Things are a little different now. Instead of being asked to empathize with the profound suffering of people who are just like us — hard-working, clean-cut, moral, church-going — we’re being asked to empathize with criminals, slavering mobs who burn and loot their own communities, and spoiled university kids willfully obstructing our daily lives. Just think about the cast of characters here:

Michael Brown was no choir boy. Minutes after a strong arm robbery, the mountainous 18-year-old who festooned his social media with pages intended to show his “gangsta” chops charged a police officer and tried to take his gun.

Eric Garner was no choir boy. Instead, he was a morbidly obese man with all the health problems attendant upon morbid obesity, a serial offender, and a man who resisted arrest.

The Ferguson and Garner protesters aren’t following in Gandhi’s and Martin Luther King’s footsteps by using non-violent protest to magnify the moral righteousness of their stand. Instead, they’re just a mob that loots, burns, assaults, and destroys with unholy glee.

I feel no empathy for these people. They are not me. They are not clean-cut, they are not law-abiding, they are not peaceful, they are not morally decent. Importantly, I (and I bet most Americans) don’t distinguish myself from these people because their skin is a different color from mine. I distinguish myself from them because their character is different from mine.

It seems fitting that the outrage expressed on behalf of Brown, Garner, and others similarly situated is cropping up in four places: ghettos, university campuses, university towns, and media outlets staffed by university graduates. In all of those places a steady diet of political correctness, moral relativism, race-based thinking, victimology, and navel-gazing has raised a generation of people schooled to abandon good character in favor of a brutish racialism that always responds most strongly to the call of the riot.

Worse, in the face of this grotesque behavior — something that is anathema to the people whose hard work funds public universities (and private ones too, through grants) and welfare enclaves — university professors offer encouragement:

Empathy is defined as “Direct identification with, understanding of, and vicarious experience of another person’s situation, feelings, and motives.” I don’t identify with anybody in today’s racial theater.

As a fairly decent human being, I’m certainly sorry that Brown and Garner died and, especially given the fallout, I especially wish they hadn’t. One can’t deny, though, that both Brown and Garner engaged in dangerous behavior just as surely as an Extreme sports athlete does. They thought they could get away with challenging police and they were wrong. (I should add here that I think it’s a travesty that the police had to be involved at all in Garner’s death, but it’s New Yorkers who voted in a legislature that made selling a loose cigarette the type of crime that results in police involvement.) I have little sympathy and no empathy for pathological stupidity.

Likewise, I lack the will to drum up empathy for people who, indulging in the rapture of the riot, destroy their own community, or for spoiled young activists who think it’s a hoot to block the commuters whose work keeps our nation running, or for opportunists who seize upon the actions of useful idiots as a vehicle for looting Apple stores.

I don’t think I’m unique in feeling this unempathetic revulsion. How many of us look at the criminals and looters and rioters and spoiled university brats and think “There but for the grace of God go I”? Instead, I bet most Americans, especially those sitting in endless traffic jams or seeing their communities destroyed, think “I hate those stupid idiots.”

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Book, looking at these photos really drives home the destruction that Lyndon Baines Johnson and a guilt-wracked Congress visited upon black Americans in 1965 with the establishment of the Great Society. As a result, it is much harder today than it was back then to find tight-knit black communities where the people don’t dress like slatterns and clowns, don’t kill 1/3 of their unborn children, marry their baby daddies, and honor the dead by standing dignified silent witness at a funeral service rather than looting their neighbor’s store.

Was this LBJ’s intent? Probably not. What he saw in his mind’s eye was the gradual elimination of the distance blacks had to cover to become as successful as whites. His hope that the laws he helped pass would endear blacks to the Democratic Party for generations was based on that expected outcome. I doubt he foresaw the dependency and dumbing down of blacks that would come as a result of constant psychological shelling by the welfare state.

So, while the Democratic plantation has a large number of dependable field-worker voters it can rely on, the party has stupidly worked itself into a corner: When your most loyal voting bloc kills off 1/3 of all its potential members year after year, it eventually diminishes your political power. When you favor one group over others in ways that are plainly racist (affirmative action, illegal immigration), you drive away a voting bloc far larger than blacks.

The Democrats have realized this, too late, in the South. Except for blue islands here and there, the South has freed itself almost entirely from its 150-year thrall under the racist, Jim Crow Democratic Party. The Midwest is next as men like Scott Walker and Bruce Rauner introduce such grown-up concepts as budget constraints and graft control to the electorate.

Yes, Book, peoples’ eyes are opening. The disgust with the lowlifes that constitute the left’s shock troops (as well as their equally repulsive media and academic masters) is leading to a massive backfire. The left fools itself into thinking it can control that fire, the same way it deludes itself into thinking it can tame its political rival, Islam.

Islam delenda est. Sinistra delenda est.

March_Hare

Daughter#2 was stuck at MacArthur Station on Black Friday due to the Michael Brown protest that stopped train service to the City. She works in the Mission District in a boutique gift shop; she was out a day’s pay and her boss was short-staffed.

She did make it to work on Saturday and heard stories about the mobs that were harassing shoppers (who are locals; there are also many families with young children) and diners along the street. She was initially sympathetic towards those outraged at Michael Brown’s killing, but no more. Now she thinks these people are “stupid” for destroying their neighborhoods. Oh–and she was even more disgusted when she found out that the “Hands Up! Don’t Shoot!” meme was a lie.

Nothing beats a “real world” education!

J K Brown

I’m not sympathetic to Brown since he purposely made himself an imminent threat to the police officer who was force to defend himself. Also, beyond not walking in the street, he could have avoided it all by just not cursing the officer when given a mild admonishment. That unexpected reply caused Wilson to focus upon him, notice the cigars which prompted Wilson to pursue the contact, after which Brown attacked Wilson.

Garner on the other hand, I am developing some sympathy for, especially if the taunting/harassment by officers that his wife related on ‘Meet the Press’ proves true. The orders to interdict the illegal street cigarette sales came from the top NYPD uniformed cop. It is possible that such pressure prompted a full on taunting by officers to get the sellers for something substantial.

Also, Garner became involved with the police on the day of his death because he broke up a fight. The officers then claimed he was selling but I don’t think they found any on him. But it is clear from the video that Garner had let the taunting get to him, he resisted arrest. The officer did use force to take him down but the “chokehold” doesn’t seem to be the real issue. It appears Garner was induced into positional asphyxia by the takedown. This is a known risk of police restraint, especially for people with large stomachs.

Here is the description from another in custody death, this time an uncooperative man with Down’s Syndrome:

Dr. George Kirkham a criminologist and former law enforcement officer told the Post , “The circumstances surrounding Saylor’s death suggest a possible case of positional asphyxia, which often goes hand in hand with a phenomenon called sudden in-custody death syndrome.”

“Positional asphyxia is typically the result of an intense struggle and often involves a person who is handcuffed and lying on their stomach after the struggle.” Kirkham says, “People often panic and can’t catch their breath. People with larger stomachs are particularly vulnerable, because their bellies will push into their sternums, making breathing even more difficult.”

Was Garner’s death criminal? Apparently not at police standard accountability. But it does appear to be negligent and by a lack of due care. If they prove the routine taunting, since it could show intent to generated a resisting event, then the taxpayers of NYC will possibly pay attention to the only thing they understand, a very large monetary payout.

MacG

One of the videos on the net you hear the videographer say that all he did was to break up a fight. An officer turns to him and says “That’s not why we’re here” or That’s not what this is about”. To know what it was about we would need the police call logs which I presume the Grand Jury had. If it is true that Garner had 40 some arrests he should have known the drill, catch and release. But then I could see how he could be fed up with that routine after just having done a good deed. Either way you do not get to physically brush off the police when they say that you are under arrest.

J K Brown

No you don’t get to brush off the police and you have to keep your wits about you so that you don’t let yourself get provoked or drawn into an arrest-able offense. It is a common tactic of police when they decide someone needs to take the ride even if they’ll beat the rap.

Take the Harvard prof who Obama commented on. He was berating the officer in his home. The officer legitimately chose to leave. The prof followed the officer out onto the porch where his berating met the elements of public disturbance.

If you look at most arrests that end up on tape and with police using force, you most often see someone who either was on the prod or someone who let the police provoke them. In either case, they create the elements of resisting arrest or other disturbance crime that causes the arrest or police violence.

Keep your wits, avoid provocation and always remember you can’t win a street trial no matter how aggressively you present your case. So it is best just to skip that hearing.

MacG

“The officer legitimately chose to leave. The prof followed the officer
out onto the porch where his berating met the elements of public
disturbance.”

Out where there maybe witnesses as well. Rather than be grateful neighbors were looking out for Gates and his property, he went off the ‘injustice’.

sandra

I don’t know how the majority of cops treat minorities. Cops have a tough job and I assume they lose their ‘tempers’ once in a while. This is what I do know. I live south of Raleigh, NC. The nightly news reveals at least two murders in Durham (not my town) daily……it’s always black on black crime. When you add that up it’s a big number at the end of the year. I don’t want to hear anymore about cops vs minorities until that other issue I just mentioned gets equal airtime.

Servo1969

It’s as if the civil rights movement, having outlived it’s true calling, has now set about turning American blacks into American Palestinians.

RaymondJelli

I am sympathetic to the plight of blacks. They are my customers. I want their businesses to thrive. Their children to be decent people who contribute to society (and become customers as well). I am always impressed how they respect Israel despite all the efforts of leftists white who carry all the atavistic European prejudices towards the Jews and want to teach it to everyone else.

I am not sympathetic to any black who allows themselves to become a proxy for the left. Just as I am not sympathetic to anyone from any race who is a proxy for the left.

Natasha Johnson

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